Are You Like Every Other Sales Person?
I learned a valuable lesson years ago when I first started selling new homes in Phoenix, Arizona.
I was under the impression that customers would actually want to talk to me; but, as it turned out …they did not. What???
I felt amazed by just how quickly they wanted to get away from me in order to go see the model homes.
Their speedy exit from my vicinity started to make me feel self-conscious to the point that I wondered if the trusted people in my life failed to alert me to a serious halitosis or BO condition!
This flee-from-me phenomenon drove me mad so I decided to enlist the wisdom of Steven, my sales partner. Steven had a calm and charming way of telling me how stupid I was and what I was doing wrong. In this case, he said, “My guess is that you sound like every sales person they have ever talked to.”
I looked blankly at Steven. He could tell I wasn’t connecting the dots.
So he continued, “Most sales people waste time by talking too much. If you sound a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g like those sales people, your customers will think you are a carbon copy of someone they already know they don’t like.”
Steven then suggested that I pay a visit to my main feature-dumping competitor and experience exactly how he was greeting customers.
Sure enough, my greeting was identical to his! I even stood in the same place!
Watching him greet people, it was clear why I was turning people off. I needed to create a radically different customer experience.
You may find yourself in the same boat. If so, let me provide a few tips to create a new and unique customer experience.
1) Know your competition’s presentation as well as you know your own. You cannot behave differently if you do not first know how to differentiate yourself. Focus on details like where does he/she stand when greeting people, what specific words do they use, what questions are they asking, etc. Then, behave differently than that!
2) Create a plan to differentiate your presentation. Based on what you know about your competition, create a more powerful presentation. For example, if your competitor opens with, “Hi. Welcome …is this your first visit?” You may open with, “So you are out shopping for _______ (cars, homes, RV, etc.) How is that going for you? Are you having fun out there?”
3) Increase your vocabulary. The greatest influencers have exemplary communication skills. Spice up your language by replacing common words with descriptive words, emotional words, and elegant words. For help with this, read the book Words That Sell by Richard Bayan.
Business philosopher, Jim Rohn, once said, “You get paid according to the value you bring to the marketplace.” I could not agree more!
I encourage you to increase your marketplace value by creating new and unique sales experiences for your customers. You will not only increase your commissions, but you will also stand out as a breath of fresh air in a marketplace full of suffocating customers.
Want to learn more about creating emotionally influential experiences with your home buyers?
Click the image below and I will send you a FREE preview chapter of my new book, “Buying the Experience: Real Life Lessons About the Way Real People Buy Homes”.
